Networks connect electronic devices together and enable them to communicate with one another. The electronic devices may include terminal communication devices (e.g. smart phones, laptops, computers, tablets, etc.), servers, hosts (processing units such as computers, printers or other peripheral devices), controllers, switches, gateways, and other network elements. These electronic devices in the network communicate with each other through communication channels or links. Underlying these channels are various physical devices. Examples of the physical devices include adapters that connect various network elements to the network, a cable or a bus that connects the adapters to a port on a network hub, the network switches that provide connectivity to each network element and the cables or buses that interconnect these network switches.
Examples of networks and network elements are disclosed in DE 101 51 436 A1, DE 101 49 983 A1, U.S. Pat. No. 7,266,758 B2, U.S. Pat. No. 7,440,393 B2, or US 2013/0185445 A1. ECMA International standard 269 discloses examples of methods by which different network elements may communicate with each other. Monitoring of different network devices can occur in a network. For instance, under Computer Supported Telecommunications Applications (CSTA) standards, a computing function is often required to start individual device monitors for each device under its control. In many networks, compliance with the CSTA standards for performance of monitoring of different devices can involve significant network resources, which can add cost to the operation of the network and/or reduce the quality of network performance. For instance, in a large deployment, up to 100,000 service requests can be required to be made by a CSTA computing function and responses by a CSTA switching function to those requests may need to be processed in a serial fashion. Such a process can require pacing by the computing function and switching function in order to not overload the system with requests at the start-up phase of monitoring.
More specifically, during the start-up phase between a CSTA Server providing a switching function (SF) and a CSTA Client providing a computing function (CF), there are a large number of messages exchanged. These messages are mandatory in the prior art to synchronize both systems. The amount of messages is related to the number of devices configured in the CSTA Server (e.g. private branch exchange—PBX) and the information processed by the CSTA Client (e.g. third party application). In the sense of the present application, the CSTA Server may be taken as an equivalent of a switching device while the CSTA client may be taken as an equivalent of a computing device.
ECMA-269 defines the start-up messages which have to be used to synchronize a CSTA Client and a CSTA Server for each device of a CSTA domain. Due to the fact that the amount of messages is directly related to the number of configured devices the initial start-up at time T=0 might need a long time.
US 2013/0185445 A1 and a further known prior art not yet published teach how to optimize the start-up after an error situation at time T=n later than time T=0. I.e., an initial synchronization at time T=0 is presumed to have already been executed. This prior art does not allow to optimize the start-up and thereby the initial synchronization at time T=0. Furthermore, US 2013/0185445 A1 and the further prior art need an error-free operation guaranteed by the CSTA Server.
There are known “all-in-one” solutions like OSBiz where server, middleware and application are often sharing the same processor and build logical but not physical separated units. In such systems, a method as described above would be of no benefit because a system restart of an OSBiz is always like the initial start-up at time T=0 because the information needed a time T=n is not available.
An object of the present invention is to substantially reduce the number of CSTA messages which are exchanged between a CSTA Client and a CSTA Server during start-up at time T=0, thus speeding up the time to synchronize both systems.